Telling the Truth
Continuing my theme of promoting civil public discourse (as opposed to so much of the uncivil public discourse that’s out there), I’d like to promote a blog on honesty that Mark Sanborn has recently posted: Absolute Honesty: Avoiding Dishonesty Traps.
He lists five dishonesty traps. (Read them in their entirety here.)
- Over-promising
- Vagueness
- Lies of omission
- Lying to ourselves
- Failing to take action
I would add the dishonesty of mislabeling something so it sounds more attractive than it actually is. (Politicians, their advisors, and representatives are masters at this.)
What would you add?
January 14th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
In my humble opinion, the biggest “dishonesty trap” in achieving a civil discourse is the attribution of secret, evil motives to the “other side” in an argument. Examples are many, but let’s take health care. Very complex issue, but the arguments for those against health care come down to “secret motives” by those who want a “government take-over” of the system, “destroy the free enterprise model” of health care” so they can institute “death panels,” etc. Notice that none of these arguments engage any of the realities of the bill. It could be argued — successfully — that we can’t afford universal health care, that the proposed program is too complex, etc. Instead, the opposing argument is basically, “How dare these evil people advance their secret agendas with this stealth plan.”
This current crisis — the inability to have a reasonable discussion about important issues — began (in its present form) with the “Gingrich Language Memo” circa 1994. That’s the moment when one side decided to make the Attribution of Secret, Evil Motives a permanent tactic (”We are uniquely virtuous, the Other Side is Evil, and Must Be Destroyed), which led us to where we are today. Notice what the memo says — the Other Side must always be associated with words like traitor, corruption, radical, pathetic, etc. This is not a “good faith” tactic. This is the tactic of someone who wants to dominate and destroy, not find common ground.
I fear that unless both sides “stand down” in this war of words, it’s going to be next to impossible to have civil discourse.